We’ve been watching this build for days, and now it looks close to done. Multiple reports have the Colorado Avalanche and Cale Makar on the doorstep of a contract extension, and the timing tells you most of what you need to know. This is a team racing a calendar it doesn’t control, more than one using leverage to lock down its best player.
Makar is entering the final year of the six-year, $54 million deal he signed in 2021, a contract that already looks like a bargain. He put up 79 points in 75 games last season, finished second in Norris Trophy voting, and logged nearly 25 minutes a night — the workload of a team’s entire back end wrapped into one player. Colorado was never going to let a player like that reach unrestricted free agency, and nobody around the team has pretended otherwise. Avalanche president Joe Sakic has said Makar would finish his career in Colorado, and confirmed the sides were already talking extension with his agent.
I live in Denver and don’t root for the Avalanche (Wisconsin loyalty doesn’t transfer just because the rent does), but you don’t need to be a fan to notice how much of this roster is built around one player controlling the puck. That’s the backdrop for everything that follows. A team doesn’t get to this point of urgency over someone replaceable.
Per the Denver Gazette, the two sides agreed to terms late Wednesday night and started prepping paperwork, with an announcement possible as soon as Friday, according to Andy Strickland of FanDuel Sports Network. Elliotte Friedman confirmed the shape of it the same day, calling the deal “a biggie” and “a critical piece of business for the Avalanche.”
https://x.com/FriedgeHNIC/status/2092963985419309386
(Every “closing in” report this summer has carried the same subtext: get it done before the calendar makes the call for you.)
What Colorado and Makar Are Actually Racing
The reported framework, up to $160 million over eight years at a $20 million average annual value, would make Makar the highest-paid defenseman in NHL history and the first player at any position to clear that $20 million mark. Those numbers were still being described as in-progress as of Wednesday’s reporting, so treat the final structure as fluid until either side confirms it. But term is the part that actually matters here, and it isn’t up for debate much longer.
Under the league’s new collective bargaining agreement, a team can only sign its own player to an eight-year extension through Sept. 15, 2026. After that, the max term drops to seven years for a club re-signing its own player, and six for anyone changing teams as a free agent. The new CBA itself runs from Sept. 16, 2026 through Sept. 15, 2030, and that eight-year window was written as a brief overlap with the old rules, not a standing option. That’s not a negotiating tactic Colorado invented. It’s a hard rule with a hard date, and it applies to the Avalanche the same as it applies to every other team racing it this month.
(Every “highest-paid defenseman ever” number gets asterisked eventually, but nobody has cracked $20 million at the position before, so this one would actually mean something.)
Why Is Term, Not Money, the Real Sticking Point?
If this were only about dollars, we wouldn’t still be talking about it in late August. Per Friedman’s earlier reporting, money was never really the debate. Term was. “Does Makar really want eight years?” Friedman asked on Aug. 25. “I don’t know that he’s gonna want to do eight years.” That’s a real complication, not a rhetorical one — locking into a deal that runs deep into the next decade is a bigger bet for the player than it is for the team.
Colorado’s version of that calculus doesn’t look much like Alex Ovechkin’s own quiet extension, which came together with far less public hand-wringing over term. Sakic’s public comments suggest the Avalanche wanted max term and got comfortable saying so out loud. Whether Makar’s side ever fully came around to eight years, or ran out of runway before the Sept. 15 cutoff made a shorter deal impossible to get full value from, is the actual negotiation that happened behind the reported numbers.
Makar Isn’t the Only One Watching the Calendar
Makar’s situation isn’t happening in isolation, and treating it as a one-team story undersells what’s going on across the league this month. Seven players, including John Marino, Ivan Demidov, and Alex Tuch, already locked in eight-year extensions before the market got crowded. The Canucks reportedly wanted the same eight-year term on Quinn Hughes before the deadline closes the door, though Hughes reportedly prefers something closer to three to five years, nearly the inverse of Colorado’s situation with Makar.
(Hughes wanting less term while his own team pushes for more is the rarer negotiation: the player arguing for freedom, not security.)
That’s the market-wide read. A rule change meant to rein in ultra-long contracts has instead set off a scramble to grab the old max term one last time before it disappears. Makar and Colorado are the biggest name in that scramble, but they are far from the only ones.
So does Colorado get this finished before Sept. 15? I think it does. The framework is reportedly already in place, paperwork is already being prepped, and an announcement was being planned for as soon as Friday — all of which points to a deal that’s essentially settled, not one still being fought over line by line. The term doubt Friedman flagged reads more like a real negotiating wrinkle that got worked through than a disagreement deep enough to blow up a deal this close to the finish line. If Makar’s camp had reservations about eight years that couldn’t be resolved, we wouldn’t be hearing about paperwork and a Friday announcement. We’d be hearing about a deal that stalled.
The bigger point survives either way. The Sept. 15 deadline will keep forcing this exact conversation across the league for the next few weeks, and Makar’s deal, whenever it’s officially announced, will be remembered as the one that made the rule change real. Watch Vancouver next. The gap between what the Canucks reportedly want and what Hughes reportedly wants is wider than anything Colorado and Makar were working through. If Vancouver can’t get a shorter deal done with Hughes before the same cutoff, that’s the version of this story that shows the rule reshaped more than one team’s summer, not just one contract. For more on how it’s playing out elsewhere, the rest of our NHL coverage is tracking it as it happens.
